Ride the wooden train that oranges paid for

The Sóller railway runs between Palma and Sóller in wooden carriages, and the valley at the far end of it built the line for itself. Sóller sits in a bowl of mountains on the other side of a pass from Palma, and at the start of the twentieth century it got tired of the pass and paid for a railway out of the orange and lemon trade.

The train leaves Palma, crosses the plain and goes through the mountain instead of over it, then comes down into the valley above the orange groves.

At the bottom is Sóller itself, with the Modernista houses built by people who left for France when the orange trade went into crisis and came home with money. A tram carries on from the town down to the port.

The line opened in 1912. The road tunnel under the pass did not open until 1997, so for most of the century the train was the easy way in, and every car went over the top.